29 BRING ME THE HEAD OF HELEN BRODIE
We all traipsed into Murdoch’s butcher shop, Scott leading the way with me next to him and Doyle, Kenny, and Mustafa bringing up the rear. Doyle had the gun in his pocket in case things got nasty. We were on high alert.
Initially Scott had wanted to go alone because Murdoch knew him, but we thought it was wiser if we all went.
“And we can have a better look around if it’s all five of us,” Doyle had explained.
“The creepy guy might be the zombie who ate Helen Brodie,” Kenny had added with a glint in his eyes.
I hoped he was kidding, but since his family had disappeared, Murdoch had been staying in his shop. Maybe he was mourning their loss or hiding something.
When we strolled in, Murdoch was skinning a rabbit with a knife on a scarred chopping board. The sight of the poor animal's dead eyes reminded me of zombie eyes, and I had to look away. The stench of fresh blood and guts didn’t help either and made me want to gag.
Murdoch looked up. “What can I do for you all?” Then he carried on with his knife, cutting through fur and skin.
You form impressions of people in your mind before you met them and I’d imagined that being a butcher Murdoch would be a strong, sturdy farmer type. The reality couldn’t have been more different. The butcher was a short, plump man with mousy brown hair and toad eyes that appeared to retreat back into his eye sockets as he talked, giving him the impression of being sleekit. It didn’t help that his fat lips resembled slugs and that they glistened because he kept on licking them, in a gesture that made me want to douse myself in disinfectant.
“Do you remember me?” Scott asked him.
“Aye, you’re Willie Crawford’s boy.” He sliced the rabbit’s belly open and pulled the insides out. The action reminded me of what the dead bastards did to people’s innards. Guts gushed out on the chopping board. “I never forget a face, son. You were always coming into our shop for a sausage roll.” His voice is pure baritone in contrast to his short, doughy frame, a body probably achieved by munching his way through too much of his own produce.
“Sorry to hear about your missing family,” said Scott. “Was there any sign of them when you looked round the island?”
Still holding the knife, Murdoch stared off into the distance. “I wish I knew what'd happened to them.” When he met Scott’s gaze, his eyes were glassy. “They could have left on the ferry to go shopping for all I know. I didn’t know what they’d planned to do that day when I left the house. Isobel was going on and on about the kids going to the dentist, and I just figured she took them to Largs for their appointments. I'd no way of knowing they’d never come back.”
We nodded in sympathy. How were any of us to know that the last words we spoke to someone would be the last words?
He wrapped a meaty paw around the rabbit’s innards, and with a jerk, deftly disembowelled the floppy creature. The smell was nauseating. I couldn’t wait to get out of here.
Scott introduced us, but although Murdoch nodded at each of us, he didn’t make eye contact.
Scott started with, “We found Helen Brodie’s remains.”
The butcher’s jaw clenched. “This isn’t the time for you to be pulling my leg, son.” He pulled the skin off the rabbit, like you would turn a sock inside out.
“I assure you, Mr. Murdoch, we wouldn’t do that.”
“Aye, I guess you wouldn’t. You’ve always been a good lad.”
Doyle stepped in. “We want to know why you didn’t find her bones when you searched the island. They were right there, in plain site on the land with the standing stones. How do you suppose you missed them?”
“I guess I just didn’t see them.”
Scott asked, “How do you suppose they got there?”
Murdoch spoke with a conviction that could have easily fooled me if I didn’t know he was lying his backside off because we'd seen the tyre tracks. “I’ve no idea. Maybe she decided to top herself and a stoat got a hold of her. Those weasels will eat anything right down to the bone. Once I saw a ewe a stoat had stripped right to the bone. Horrendous it was.”
Scott glanced at me conspiratorially then let loose with the million dollar question. “Did you lie about the island being clear of wakers?”
Murdoch’s eyes get shifty. “Lie?”
“You told my parents there were none of those things around here. Is that the truth?”
“Aye.”
“Then how do you explain Helen Brodie’s bones?”
“No idea, son,” Murdoch said, as he plucked a meat cleaver off the counter and examined the sharp edge before he chopped off the rabbit’s head. “Anything else you guys want to know?”
Right there and then, I'd wished I’d brought my baseball bat with me so I could clobber him right now. He was lying to us.
I thought Scott was going to say that, but instead he grabbed my arm. His eyes were ringed with white, like he’s seen a ghost. “All right,” he said, looking around. “Thanks...” He directed me towards the door.
I wanted to tell Scott that he was hurting me, but I saw his horrified stare and followed it to the knife board behind the counter. There I saw a gold necklace hanging on a bloody peg. The gold letters HB are clearly visible. It must be Helen Brodie’s. Murdoch’s kept himself a souvenir like a frigging serial killer. Dead bastards weren't the only monsters around.
Was she butchered in his shop, or did he take her somewhere else? Why would he do such a thing? My heart was beating so hard I felt unsteady on my feet.
Once we were well away from Murdoch’s shop, Kenny asked us, “What the hell was the rush to get out of there?”
“You didn’t see it?” I asked. “The pendant with Helen Brodie’s initials?”
“Shit,” Kenny said.
Doyle and Scott locked eyes.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Scott asked him.
“Aye.” Doyle nodded. “That bastard definitely killed Helen Brodie, and I think he killed all those missing people.”
It sounded so shocking, but I couldn’t help thinking that Doyle could be right because having met Murdoch, nothing would surprise me about the man.
The question that kept banging around in my brain was why.
***
We were back at Scott’s house in front of the coal fire. We’d been talking about Murdoch when Scott posed the question. “What do we do now?”
“I could just go back and put a bullet in his brain,” Doyle said. “The guy’s a killer. How else did he get that pendant?”
“I know how you feel,” Scott said. “It’s not like we can just call the police. Helen was a friend. I liked her. She deserves justice.” He stopped talking as if he was saying a silent prayer, and I placed my hand in his. He took my hand and squeezed it.
Nobody said anything until Scott let my hand go. “We need to follow him. Find out if he has the other missing people’s bones stashed somewhere.”
Mustafa threw in his two cents. “Maybe he hasn’t killed them all yet.”
“The chances of that are slim,” Scott said.
Kenny’s eyes gleamed. “It’s not Murdoch we need to keep an eye on. It’s the area where we found the bones. I’d bet it’s his dumping ground.”
Doyle smiled like he was impressed by Kenny’s thinking. “Okay, some of us can set up in that abandoned caravan near where we found the bones. We’ll stay there for a few nights to see if Murdoch comes calling.”
“We’ll take shifts,” Kenny said, excitement in his voice. “The rest of us can stay in the farmhouse. It’s only a few minutes away, so we can get there quickly if we need to.”
Scott’s parents’ house was cramped, but so far, we’d resisted the temptation to decamp to the unoccupied farmhouse, mainly because it stood alone on a hill some distance away from the town, and we wanted to stay with Scott’s parents. The Galbraiths, who’d lived in the farmhouse for thirty-odd years, wouldn’t be back.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, glad to have finally decided on a course of action.
The easiest thing to do would have been to ignore what we’d found and pretend everything was hunky-dory and be content in our own wee bubble. But if we did that, we could end up getting ourselves killed or worse, infected, because if there were any dead bastards on the island, eventually starvation would force them to come after us.
Kenny had predicted that, and Kenny was always right.
30 LET THE MADNESS COMMENCE
Operation Oor Wullie (we call it that because there was a PC Murdoch in the famous comic strip) had been a damp squib. After five uneventful days and nights, we'd began to think the butcher would never make his move, and we wouldn’t find out if Helen Brodie wasn't his only victim. Or worse, that we were victims of post-apocalyptic paranoia, as Kenny had dubbed this new mental disease.
It’d just gone 3am, when the walkie-talkie crackled. I knew the time because I’d just got back to our bedroom from the toilet when the grandfather clock in the farmhouse hall bonged three times, making me jump. We couldn’t work out how to stop the thing. Although I favoured striking it down the middle with an axe, the others insisted that we still had to respect other people’s stuff even when those people were in all likelihood dead.
Doyle’s thready voice speared through the speaker. “Subject on the go. Repeat, subject on the go.”
“I don’t want to get up,” Scott murmured with his head under his pillow.
“Stop shagging the missus, Scotty boy and...” It was Mustafa’s annoying voice, but Doyle must have ripped the walkie-talkie back out of Mustafa’s grubby mitt because he was cut off, and Doyle came back on. “Approach from the back. Keep torches low.”
By this time, Kenny had appeared in our room, and we couldn’t hear what Doyle said next because of the static.
It took the three of us under five minutes to get to the standing stones where we’d found the bones. We were carrying our weapons: Scott has his axe, Kenny his poker, and I my trusty baseball bat.
We jumped off our bikes, and keeping our torches low, we made our way through the trees.
I knew we were close to the shed when I heard Murdoch's van engine idling and saw the ghostly beam of his headlights. When a van door slammed, we sneaked in for a closer view.
I’m conscious of the fact that one wrong move, one snapped branch or kicked stone, or a slip in the snow could alert him to our presence, and then we’d never discover what he was up to.
We hunkered down behind a bush, a few feet away from the shed, knowing that Mustafa and Doyle were watching from the caravan.
The headlights illuminated the shed and the surrounding area. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to see what the butcher was doing.
From the back of the van, Murdoch lifts out a sack. I’m immediately curious as to what’s in it. It’s the size of a roll of carpet, and the tied top is flopped over. He carries the sack over his shoulder the short distance to the shed then drops it on the ground in front of the door.
There's a clunk as the padlock falls open, and then he disappears inside. What’s so interesting about the old farm equipment this early in the morning?
When he came out, he had a knife he used it to cut the rope that’s tying the end of the sack closed. The contents tumbled out onto the snow.
The sight of a body made me gasp. Whatever I expected, it wasn’t this. Long blond hair ribboning in the breeze.
It was Lindsay. She wasn’t moving.
Before Kenny and I can stop him, Scott races towards her.
As he ran, he yelled her name. “Lindsay!” I’d never heard a voice filled with so much despair.
Murdoch pulls out a gun. Panic stampedes across my heart. “Look out,” I scream to Scott.
Murdoch raises the gun to fire. A rock flies through the air. It strikes the butcher’s wrist, and the gun flies out of his hand, landing on the snow.
With a battle cry Robert the Bruce would be proud of, Scott cannons into Murdoch, knocking him down. Kenny goes for the gun.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of three shambling figures: one woman and two teens, a boy and a girl, and although they look like death, I’m pretty sure I know who they are.
We’ve just found Murdoch’s family.
They’d come out of the shed.
Breaking cover, I run headlong towards them, but before I can get close, the woman leaps on top of Lindsay, teeth exposed and drooling like a rabid dog.
Scott has almost reached his sister.
But he's too late.
The zombie woman rips into Lindsay’s neck with gnashing teeth. Bones crunch. Blood geysers from the wound. The teenagers were right behind her, snarling and ready to feed.
Scott dives at mamma zombie, knocking her to the ground, and as Kenny and I get busy with the other two, Scott raises his axe and chops off the dead bastard’s head with a decisive thunk.
Murdoch screams. “Isobel, no. That’s my Isobel.”
I'm swinging my bat, bashing the boy’s skull, again and again. Sticky wet grunge splatters all over me, blood and brains.
Only when the dead bastard stops moving do I stopped bashing him. Kenny bludgeons Murdoch’s teenage daughter to death with his poker.
I turn to Scott. He's crouched beside Lindsay, cradling her head. “Lindsay. Everything’s going to be okay. Lindsay.” He shakes her shoulders. “Mum and Dad can’t wait to see you.”
I make it to his side. “Scott, she’s gone.”
His eyes are filled with tears. “No. She’ll wake up. Wake up, Lindsay. I’ll get you tickets to see that boy band you’re mad on.”
There was a vicious flap of skin ripped open at her neck. She was beyond saving.
The worst thing about listening to his anguish is that all his words will be for nothing. I have to get these facts past Scott’s grief and into his analytical mind. “She’ll wake up, all right. A zombie. You know what we have to do.”
My attention's so focused on Scott and Lindsay that I hadn’t noticed Murdoch on his knees in the snow, crying into his gloved hands. “You killed my family,” he cried out.
Doyle and Mustafa appear out of the darkness and haul him up by both arms.
“Gonnae kill the bastard,” Doyle mutters, holding his gun to Murdoch’s temple.
“Wait,” Scott shouts. He lies Lindsay’s head on the ground, gentle as a mum putting baby in its crib. “He’s got some explaining to do first.”
Mustafa let go of Murdoch and pulled his dropped gun from the snow. “Not a bad aim with a rock, am I.”
So, it was him?
“Thanks,” I tell him, “for saving Scott’s life.”
Mustafa walks up to Lindsay and cocks the gun. Scott shakes his head, but doesn’t try to stop him.
Mustafa fires.
Lindsay’s head explodes in a plume of red mist.
“What do we do with this piece of shit?” Doyle’s boot slams into Murdoch’s back, and he flops over on his stomach like a beached walrus.
“You don’t understand,” whimpers Murdoch.
Doyle stomps his boot heel on Murdoch’s neck, driving his chin into the snow. The butcher gags.
Kenny has his poker raised as though he wants to knock Murdoch’s head off.
“Let me do it,” Mustafa said, cocking the gun again. “Let me kill him.”
At this, Scott clambered to his feet. “Let him up.”
Doyle removed his boot hold, and Murdoch hauls himself to his feet, groaning from the effort.
“Why did you snatch Lindsay?” Scott’s neck muscles strain as he went nose-to-nose with the man who kidnapped his sister. “Why did you bring her here, in a fucking bag?”
“I needed to feed my family.” There was no regret in Murdoch’s voice, only arrogance that made me want to waste him right now. “They never went to the mainland like I said. They got bitten.”
“Why did you lie about that?” I say.
“Because he’s a fucking liar.”
Scott head-butts the butcher with so much force he's sent reeling and lands on his backside.
Doyle and Mustafa drag the murdering bastard back to his feet. Scott goes to hit him again, fists balled up and reared back, but Murdoch’s words stop him.
“I heard them screaming in the house.”
I wanted to hear him out. “Your family?”
“I was in the garage checking the tyre pressure when I heard them. They were screaming, so I grabbed my gun and ran inside. Our postman was attacking my wife, tearing into her like a mad dog. Can you imagine what that was like?”
I could.
Doyle grumped. “You guys go and talk him to death. I’m gonnae have a look round.” He tromped off towards the shed, gun barrel leading the way.
“Isobel was bitten,” Murdoch went on. “Then my two kids jumped in to help her, and they were bitten. If I hadn’t killed the postman, he’d have eaten them all, the swine. I put a bullet through his brain. But the blast attracted more wakers. They came in through the front door, walked right past me, and went after my family again. I managed to get Isobel and the kids into my van and I brought them here. I knew what was going to happen to them. I’d heard about it on the news. And sure enough, they died and woke up again.”
“Explain this then,” I said. “Why didn’t they attack you?”
“I don’t know. None of them did.”
Kenny, our resident expert jumps in with, “He’s a butcher. He reeks of death and decay and blood. To the dead bastards, he doesn’t smell human. He smells like one of them.”
Murdoch carries on. “I stayed with them, wishing they would recognise me, hoping they’d get better, but they didn’t. They kept on getting weaker. I needed to feed them.”
“So that’s why you took Lindsay from her school?” Scott’s voice shook with rage.
“I didn’t take her. She was hiding in our wardrobe.”
“Liar. She was at school in Largs.”
Murdoch gave him a smug look. “She dodged school that day with my daughter. She didn’t want me finding out and telling your parents.” Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “I didn’t discover her hiding place until afterwards.”
“Why did you keep her?” said Mustafa, his dark eyes brimming with hate. “You could have took her home.”
The butcher's gaze focuses on Scott, and for once, I spot remorse in his eyes. “I thought about letting Lindsay go, honest I did, but how would I explain why she was with me? She should have been in at school.”
He’s making it sound as if this is all her fault.
Mustafa screamed, “So you give her to the dead bastards to eat? Her punishment for ditching class?”
“Not right away.” He was shaking, and not just from the cold. Fear has taken over the sadness in his eyes. “I saved her for later, if I couldn’t get someone else.”
Scott poked him in the chest. “So you fed locals townsfolk to the freaks, you sick bastard."
Pride beamed in Murdoch’s eyes. “I rounded up all the wakers using a fishing net and snares, I kept the town safe from them.”
“But not Helen Brodie and the others. What did they do to deserve to be on the menu?”
Murdoch shrugged off their deaths like he was swatting a fly. “Sacrifice a few for the good of the whole, I say.”
“You’re just a murderer.” Mustafa lunges at Murdoch, fist hooked into a punch. He must have got some weight behind it because when the punch landed, the butcher crumples to his knees, dazed.
Scott drags him to his feet; his every word is delivered like a punch. “You killed those people, and even in the absence of law and order, you need to pay the price. I say the death penalty is too good for you.”
“Now don't be silly here, Scotty boy.” There was a trace of forced joviality in Murdoch’s voice, as though he honestly believed that the boy who used to come into his shop for a sausage roll would never kill him. “What are you going to do, boys? Shoot me?”
Scott spat in Murdoch’s face. “That’s what you deserve.”
Sweat dripped down Murdoch’s podgy face. “You need me if you want to survive.” His voice was whiny, the simpering of a spoilt child. “I control the zombies.”
“Nobody controls zombies,” says Kenny.
“Bad news,” Doyle said, stepping up beside me, boots crunching in the snow. “I found some more inside the shed, under the floorboard. He’s a regular collector.”
I gasp. There's more of them?
Mustafa grabs Murdoch’s throat. “Who the hell are they?”
“Leave them alone,” squeals Murdoch.
Mustafa squeezed harder. “You think I won’t snap your neck?”
“Are any of them the missing folk?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Then who are they?” Scott demands to know.
“My brother, his wife and my niece,” Murdoch whimpers, rubbing his throat. “I was just going to take care of them until they found a cure.”
“There is no fucking cure.” Mustafa spits the words into the butcher’s face. “The only cure is splattering their brains all over the shop; an axe through the brain, a poker through the eye.”
“Now it’s my turn to take care of them.” Doyle showed Murdoch his gun. “It’ll be like shooting ducks in a barrel.”
“No,” Murdoch said. “Don’t kill them. They’re all that’s left of my family.”
“I’ve got a better idea.” Scott shoved Murdoch towards the shed. “I think a family reunion is in order.”
Mustafa swung open the door, and Doyle showed them the trapdoor. Groans and wheezing were coming from under it. He lifts it up. The zombie noises get louder. Grasping hands appear from the gloom.
What happens next happens so fast I didn’t have a chance to take a breath.